research article on Jehovah's Witnesses (page 3)

AlanF

Hi Steve,

Today I picked up your article in "Liberty" and read it. Outstanding!

I noticed a tiny number of inaccuracies, but they're trivial in comparison with the whole article. If you want some specific comments, please email me at [email protected] .

I was particularly intrigued by your reference (p. 49) to practitioners of "the militantly relativist species of religious studies". It seems to me that a small number of rather loud and prominent students of "New Religious Movements" have given these "movements" a great deal of moral encouragement, which is opposite of what they ought to be given. I think that the Watchtower Society has capitalized on the writings of these people. I assume you're referring to people like J. Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvigne.

I didn't know that you're so heavily involved in Ayn Rand studies. I'd like to talk to you more about this sometime.

AlanF

Room 215

Steve, a glance at the magazine's website, libertymagazine.org, under ``current issue" makes no reference to this article. Does the online version differ from the hard copy?

NeonMadman

Wasn't Liberty originally a Seventh-day Adventist publication? Is it still published by the SDA's or has it become independent of them?

greven

Please someone scan and post this material!

As far as I know 'liberty' is not available in The Netherlands... :o(((((

Greven

tinkerbell82

a glance at the magazine's website, libertymagazine.org, under ``current issue" makes no reference to this article

that's because the article is in the sept/oct edition and the latest one on the site is the july/aug edition. i thought the same thing at first. ;)

proplog2

Prof. Cox:

It's unfortunate for JW's that the internet appeared at the most vulnerable stage in JW history. All religion is hocum. You don't see the Catholic Church dealing with its doctrinal problems, historical blunders, mistreatment of infidels on the internet. They still address these problems with institutional methods ie. edicts, resolutions, convocations etc. If religions were to come clean they would all disolve because their basic premise that there is a personal God is flawed.

Humans are easily seduced by the transcendental.

I enjoyed your article. YES enjoyed. It's an excellent summation of what I have seen in my 50+ years association with the Watchtower (Third Generation JW). It is a religion that reflects what was going on in America during its development. You made that very clear. It might have been worth mentioning that neither the Watchtower or the Awake advertises its Web Site. I think their failure to do that defines their relationship with the New World of information.

sf

The article concerns the conflict between the Watchtower Society and the Internet and incorporates a history and analysis of the Society and its opposition.

I have a 'case in progress' in relation to conflicts with online jws.

Do you have a phone number that is available to the public? If so, a call will prove to be much more productive and I'll be better able to give precise details of the case that is now under investigation.

Thank you, sKally

garybuss

I just finished reading the Liberty article. Very well done. It was a captivating read. I always enjoy writings about the Watch Tower Corporation by intellectuals who never were members. Their choice of words to describe that which I took for granted for much of my life is entertaining to me.

I liked the idea that "The Society's task is, first, to convince people that it has a comprehensive and fully consistent explanation of reality; . . ."

That's a job that requires more than a little heavy handed persuasion and a point that many of us could not accept on any level. I think they lost more than a few battles with the presentation that the seven trumpets of Revelation were fulfilled in the seven district assemblies of Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1920's. That one, in my opinion is WAY over the top, followed closely with the Jewish tribal prohibition of eating meat of a strangled animal equating to refusing modern blood medical treatment for babies.

I give the article an A+. The magazine is a keeper for future reference. Good job! GaryB

Stephen Cox

Dear Friends,

I'm not trying to bring discussion of this topic to an end, especially since I started it, but I did want to take a moment and thank everyone who has commented. One thing that I tried to bring out in my article in "Liberty" was my impression of the online Witness discussion community as a lively, complex, and vital "society," with generous enthusiasms and intellectual interests. Whether I succeeded in bringing that out or not, you can judge; but your own response to me has provided new evidence for my impression.

I've often noticed that almost any question that comes up in a community like this gets itself answered--there is always at least one person who knows what the answer is. (Ralph Ellison published an essay on this aspect of real communities called "The Little Man at Chehaw Station"; it's in his collection called "Going to the Territory.) There seems to be one unanswered question at the moment, though--the relationship between "Liberty" magazine, where my article appears, and other "Liberty" magazines, including the 7th Day Adventist one. There isn't any relationship. The "Liberty" where I published is a libertarian intellectual journal that has been in existence only about 15 years. It's libertarian in the sense that it favors minimal government and absolute individual rights, but beyond that it has no "party line," and it's open to a variety of cultural interests. My own research interest in the Witnesses and other non-"mainstream" religions comes partly from my libertarian interest in indivdualism, it's noteworthy that these religions are often shaped by extreme individualists, in the psychological sense, but become extremely authoritarian. Yet because American culture is inherently individualist, it can be very hard to maintain even a "voluntary" authoritarianism. The internet, in particular, is an example of how people can form communities and work together WITHOUT forfeiting their individuality. It's what Friedrich Hayek called a "spontaneous order."

Anyway, folks, thank you!

Stephen

research article on Jehovah's Witnesses

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